Wolk Law Firm Obtains Multi-Million Dollar Verdict
Jury Awards more than $11 Million in airplane crash lawsuit
December 14, 2011, Philadelphia, PA – The Wolk Law Firm has obtained yet another multi-million dollar verdict for its clients in the case of Marsico Moran vs. Winner Aviation Corporation.
The verdict, a total of $11.358 million dollars was returned after a two week jury trial in Philadelphia during which The Wolk Law Firm brought an actual Cessna 337 Skymaster twin engine aircraft into a city owned parking lot for an up close and personal orientation for the jury.
The plaintiffs suffered 3rd degree burns over 35% of their bodies as the aircraft they were flying crashed into a water treatment plant after losing engine power shortly after takeoff from the Dekalb Peachtree Airport near Atlanta Ga.
Plaintiffs contended that ineffective inspections and maintenance were the cause of the power interruption.
One of the plaintiffs, a doctor, is now back to work performing cancer dermatological surgeries but the other, a female airline pilot, has been unable to rejoin her profession.
The case was tried by Arthur Alan Wolk, Cynthia Devers, Bradley Stoll and Cheryl DeLisle of The Wolk Law Firm of Philadelphia and they were assisted by Jaime Lebovitz, Ellen McCarthy and Tamara Brininger of the Cleveland based law firm of Nurenberg Paris.
The Wolk Law Firm is internationally renowned for obtaining and holding the largest aviation verdicts.
We are thankful for the jury system because it allows a judgment of the most complicated and serious matters through the personal sacrifice of citizens willing to do their duty.
Arthur Wolk Televised Pennsylvania Supreme Court Argument
Wolk honored with first Pennsylvania Supreme Court Televised Argument
Decision by Court expected in 6 months
Watch Video – Arthur Alan Wolk argued the scope of the General Aviation Revitalization Act as it might apply to aircraft maintenance publications.
PENNSLYVANIA – (9.19.2011) – Aviation attorney Arthur Alan Wolk was honored recently by being assigned the very first televised appellate argument before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
The argument was doubly significant because it was held in the building that first housed the United States Supreme Court from 1790-1803.
Wolk argued the scope of the General Aviation Revitalization Act as it might apply to aircraft maintenance publications such as a maintenance manual or service bulletin. Wolk argued that either the Service Bulletins were not parts and thus the statute of repose should not apply or if the maintenance instructions or Service Bulletin were parts or components the 18 year statute of repose applied and thus plaintiffs’ lawsuit was filed within the required 18 years.
The issue is critically important to aviation crash litigators because courts are not uniformly holding that manufacturers can be liable for defective maintenance instructions including Service Bulletins if the airplane component that failed is more than 18 years old to which the instructions applied no matter how recently they were issued.
Big Brother is Watching
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING EVERYTHING – INCLUDING YOUR FLIGHT
The Department of Transportation gathers a lot of information. That includes who owns every aircraft registered here in the United states and thanks to air traffic computers, every movement of that aircraft. In other words whatever the controllers have, the Government stores and since it’s gathered at public expense, you guessed it, it is available to anyone with an internet connection.
That of course allows those neat tracking sites like Flight Aware and FlightPlan.com to track each flight and show it graphically over the geography and with weather depicted as well. The flight’s aircraft number, its altitude and ground speed, its expected time of arrival and its destination are portrayed. It is therefore possible for anyone with a computer or a cell phone with an app to know precisely where any airline flight or corporate aircraft is at any time.
If, say, you want your office, or family or transportation provider, FBO or other legitimately interested person to know your airplane’s whereabouts this information is just great.
But there is a downside. If you don’t want to be tracked, then you would have to opt out of the program using a provision called BARR, Block Aircraft Registration Request.
That would allow your aircraft number to be kept from inquiring eyes.
Well the Government, never at loss for stupid actions, has decided to eliminate the BARR program except in special instances of real terror or security threats.
This of course means that anyone who flies will be able to be tracked by the bad guys who will know when you are away from home or office, where you are conducting business, maybe with whom you are meeting and where and when you will be home.
So instead of helping people feel and be secure, our Government is helping pilots and their crews and passengers be less secure.
Way to go Government, way to go! This must have been approved by the Department of Homeland Security which in addition to monitoring your flights likely monitors your phone calls, e-mails and lots of other stuff.
Big Brother is watching everything, including your flight.
There is hope, lots of aviation trade organizations are suing the Government so maybe some Federal Judge will recognize the privacy implications and order the DOT to leave well enough alone.
Arthur Alan Wolk
AF 447 – The Rush to Blame the Crew
AF 447 – THE LONG ANTICIPATED RUSH TO BLAME THE CREW
Air France decided to wait and see and now we have seen over 200 dead
Air France 447 was the arch typical confluence of a number of factors that figure in any aircraft accident.
The conditions were night out over the South Atlantic. The Tropical Convergence Zone, that area of our earth’s atmosphere where the Northern Hemispheric direction of winds collides with the Southern Hemisphere’s opposite direction resulting in violent giant sized thunderstorms.
Other aircraft that night diverted more than 200 miles to avoid the worst of the storms that AF 447’s crew decided to penetrate.
The crew was more than amply experienced in the A-330 with a collective experience of some five thousand hours in that model.
What the crew could not have known is that Air France decided not to urgently replace even one of the pitot tubes with models less likely to ice over.
In short Air France made a choice to expose the crew and passengers to a serious risk of death or injury due to its decision to wait and see.
Air France did the same thing with its Concorde fleet by not installing safety measures to avoid penetrations of fuel tanks from exploding tires. That decision was responsible for the only fatal accident of that aircraft taking 100 people with it.
As the Airbus made its way towards a line of level five and six thunderstorms, the aircraft was manned by an experienced first officer and a less experienced junior FO. The Captain was in the back.
Shortly after entering the weather, airspeed was lost and the autopilot disconnected. This should not have caused loss of the attitude indications but no doubt generated many warnings and messages.
The pitot tubes iced over and then deiced and then iced over wreaking havoc with the aircraft computers and messages.
The aircraft was in cruise at the time so nothing should have changed to result in the loss of the aircraft.
Soon however the aircraft began gyrations that were the stuff that horror films are made of. Sudden pitch ups and downs, engines to idle to takeoff power, altitude changes culminating in as much as a ten thousand foot per minute descent to the ocean below.
Nearly two years after the crash, the flight data and cockpit voice recorders were discovered and recovered.
The vertical stabilizer was found six miles from the main wreckage.
The data which everyone agrees is false because of the pitot tube icing has been pieced together to conclude that the cause of the crash was the flight crew putting the aircraft into a deep stall that resulted in a rapid descent in roughly level aircraft attitude nose up precariously with takeoff power while they watched themselves crash speaking a translated French gibberish that no flight crew would ever speak like under the circumstances.
Let’s see now, an experienced flight crew in cruise with the aircraft all trimmed up for level flight pitched the aircraft nose so high that the aircraft not only stalled but went further into the never never land regime of deep stall.
Then with a working set of attitude instruments the three of them (the Captain returned to the cockpit during the descent) didn’t realize what was going on, couldn’t regain control of what the French say was a perfectly intact aircraft and then died along with their passengers no doubt while humming the Marseillaise.
I would like to suggest that what has been written by French authorities is totally and absolutely wrong and I can think of a few French epithets the crew would be hurtling their way if they had lived.
First, no mention of whether Air France dispatch told the crew to avoid the area of increasingly serious weather or if they had put on enough fuel to divert the necessary hundreds of miles.
Second, no mention of the limitations of the on board radar to provide adequate penetration information or whether the flight should just have been cancelled due to an impenetrable line of weather that no aircraft should enter.
Third, no mention of how fully stalled an A-330 can possible develop a ten thousand foot per minute descent rate which is the rate one sees with an aircraft that has already lost critical parts in flight.
Fourth, no mention of a “G” tracing to see how beat up the aircraft got when it entered that line of thunderstorms.
Fifth, why did the computers not have a remedy for the crew when deeps stall is a flight tested regime?
Sixth, why is this the second A-330 with a composite vertical stabilizer that has crashed with it separated from the main wreckage?
Seventh, when was the vertical stabilizer lost and did the aircraft Split S or knife edge down because it was gone and that maneuver cause the high descent rate?
Eighth, why don’t any French investigators know how to translate French into English expressions that explain what the crew was doing during the descent.
Ninth, why didn’t Air France replace at least one of the pitot tubes with the non-icing type before losing an aircraft and its crew and passengers instead of waiting to see what would happen if they did nothing?
Now at the end of the day this crew will be blamed by the French Government because it would be a sacrilege for the French to blame their home grown aircraft industry or their national airline for anything but unless they get serious the world aircraft industry will become increasingly wary of the legitimacy of the investigators’ conclusions.
The crew should never have tried to penetrate that line of weather.
The airline should never have dispatched the aircraft in that weather.
The radar was no doubt attenuating such that the crew could not see just how bad the weather was.
The pitot tubes should have replaced at once since the aircraft could not fly as certified and thus was not airworthy.
The concept of deep stall should have been annunciated by the computers and a suggested resolution made as it is an easy flight regime to recover from but engine power must be reduced to idle and the nose dropped well below the horizon which is contrary to what is trained for.
The vertical stabilizer must remain on the aircraft for the duration of the flight, period!
This investigation relying on admittedly invalid data is a sick portrayal of why Government aircraft accident investigation aided by manufacturers and airlines worldwide doesn’t work and why “Dead men tell no tales.” is still the standard that conclusions of probable cause are improperly measured by.
Arthur Alan Wolk
REPEAT LESSON-LANDING IN THUNDERSTORMS IS DANGEROUS
American Airlines learned yet again that attempting a landing in a thunderstorm can be very tricky. This is the second such accident suffered by the carrier in 10 years when its crew landed in very heavy rain from a thunderstorm over the airport.
Here’s the problem. Thunderstorms generate very sharp changes in air current direction and velocity called wind shear. They also drop lots of rain in a short time making visibility poor and just coating the runway with sheets of water making tire traction and braking marginal. Even with the best auto braking and anti-skid, stopping distances are greatly increased. Pilots reacting to the bumps and windshear on approach add extra speed which further increases the landing distance and stopping distance as well. Put this all together and an overshoot is predictable, as occurred recently in Jamaica.
Fortunately, the aircraft left the runway at very slow speed so even though it broke into three pieces, the velocity was slow enough so injuries were not life threatening.
Interestingly, this airport had no safety areas beyond the runway ends to prevent damage to the aircraft, opting instead to use all the available real estate for the runway. Had the required 1,000 foot safety areas been in place beyond the 8,900 foot paved surface, or had EMAS (porous concrete that slows aircraft about to leave the runway) been installed, this airplane likely would have been towed out intact and no one would have received injury. One day, all airports that receive commercial service will install such safety features but until then, these accidents will continue. At this airport not only was there no safety area, there was an abrupt drop-off from the runway edge to the adjacent road and beach below, which broke the airplane that otherwise would have likely remained intact. The airport approach light system was incomplete due to a month long outage which, had it been working, would have assisted the crew in making a stabilized approach under the adverse weather conditions.
Bottom line, every pilot should once again be reminded that landing in a thunderstorm is a chancy proposition, especially on an island runway at night in very heavy rain and windshear. Holding for 20 minutes until the rain subsided would have been a better choice. There simply is no substitute for a stabilized approach and without it, landings become an unpredictable event.
American Airlines should lobby very hard for safety areas or EMAS at all airports it serves. It should also remind its flight crews that landing long and fast in the rain at night leaves very little margin left if the airplane can’t stop. All aboard this flight were very lucky.
Three Asleep In The Cockpit, The Captain, The First Officer, And The Department Of Homeland Security
Recently, two events captured the news media’s attention. One was a Delta Airlines Boeing 767 that landed on the taxiway instead of the runway at the Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. The other was a Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 whose crew failed to communicate with air traffic control or the company dispatch for more than an hour and a half, and missed its destination by 150 miles until the flight attendant knocked on the cockpit door to ask why there was no descent for landing.
The first incident occurred when the Delta crew flew a lengthy international trip. When the Boeing 767 arrived at the airport, the runway end identifier lights were out of service (they’re the little white flashing lights that tell pilots where the runway starts) and the localizer was also shut down (the electronic pathway that guides pilots to the runway end). So, with an air traffic controller obviously asleep at the switch, the big B-767 landed on the taxiway right next to the runway. Under different circumstances, like another airplane on the taxiway, this could have been a disaster. You might ask how that could happen, but here are all the things that add up to this event.
With all of the runways at the Hartsfield, giving landing clearance to an airliner on a runway with much of its safety equipment inoperative is inexcusable. The crew should have refused the landing clearance. But the FAA has for years contributed to the problem by using confusing lighting at the airport. I have argued with the guy in charge of airport signage for 30 years but since the idea wasn’t invented in his head, nothing gets changed for the better. The runway lights are orange, both sides and the centerline. The taxiway lights are green down the centerline and blue on each side. Since the centerline of some taxiway’s are green, and some are yellow like the runway and yes some are green and yellow at the end where the runway intersects, it’s no wonder that a pilot looking at them from afar can mistake a taxiway, especially a large one, for a runway. So the flight deck crew, tired after a long flight, looks at the myriad of lights and thinks the taxiway is to the left instead of the right because there is nothing to identify it clearly and lands on the taxiway. Nothing really unsafe here as long as the taxiway is unoccupied because the taxiways at the Hartsfield are as wide as runways at other airports. If the taxiway had totally blue lights it would have been unmistakable but, no, the FAA has a better idea, keep it confusing so one disaster or near disaster after another can happen. The controller too must have been glassy eyed because he didn’t warn the Delta flight and at that hour he had nothing else to do.
All accidents and incidents have more than one cause. In this case it was the combination of no warning, no runway identifier lights, no localizer, confusing taxiway lighting, tired crew.
The Northwest flight is another near disaster. The flight departed San Diego, CA for Minneapolis. Shortly after passing Denver, air traffic controllers were unable to raise the flight by radio. Company dispatch likewise couldn’t get the flight deck crew’s attention. The aircraft flew 600 miles, passed Minneapolis and then only after a flight attendant pounded on the cockpit door, the crew turned the airplane around and landed. The cockpit voice recorder was recorded over so the cockpit conversation that preceded the turnaround was unavailable. The flight deck crew first reported they were having a heated discussion and just lost situational awareness. Then they said they were working on their laptops, a prohibited flight deck activity. The FAA’s punishment was swift and not unexpected, emergency revocation of the flight deck crew’s pilots’ licenses, a vocational death knell to this very experienced and otherwise incident free crew. It is painful to see this unfold because the crew was obviously sleeping. Had they come clean right away and blamed it on scheduling, or interruption in their circadian rhythm from sleep deprivation, perhaps a little mercy would have been shown them at least on appeal.
But never touched by the press was the fact that the Department of Homeland Security was more sound asleep than the crew. That aircraft was airborne far longer than any flight on 9/11 yet no fighters were scrambled to check on it, no steps were taken to protect cities, sensitive military or civilian installations from an aircraft that, for all the Department knew, was hijacked. Falling asleep and endangering the passengers by possibly running out of fuel is one thing but risking them being shot down is quite another. In short, everyone on that aircraft could have been dead either from a crash or a worst nightmare, being shot down for no good reason.
What we need to ask ourselves is how did the Department of Homeland Security fail us again? It demonstrates to me that we have learned nothing from 9/11 and worse, after hundreds of billions spent, we are no better off eight years later.
Now Congress, if it can interrupt its current investigation of the two concussions suffered annually in NFL play, should instead focus on why Homeland Security failed us and whether a Bugs Bunny alarm clock is needed in aircraft cockpits. More realistic however, should be the introduction of real time video of the cockpit crew steaming back to the dispatcher. This would obviate the need for a cockpit voice recorder and be a useful tool to address a growing problem of cockpit fatigue due to the boredom of automated aircraft. It would also vastly simplify accident investigation.
This week was prophetic and lucky. The fatigue suffered from having nothing to do is risky, the absence of hundreds of deaths because of it is really lucky, and the incompetence of the Department of Homeland Security may sadly portend bad things to come.
Hudson River Tragedy Same Old, Same Old
Nine people dead and everyone is wondering how this could happen. The nut cases are out in force, shrieking that small aircraft are a menace and should be banned from New York airspace. The NTSB sent a go-team along with representatives of each of the aircraft makers and their engine builders to investigate the mid-air crash. If it had happened to anyone else, they would have sent a new hire with two weeks training.
This cause of the accident is simple and anyone who has ever flown into New York’s airspace could have predicted something like it would happen. Even though Visual Flight Rules (VFR) aircraft regularly use this airspace, if a careful pilot wants to get radar flight-following he might as well try calling the President because no one answers.
Altman didn’t have the chance to call Newark Approach Control before his aircraft was struck by the climbing helicopter
At the same time, a Liberty Helicopters tour was about to embark on a sight-seeing flight from the 30th Street Heliport and enter the same densely populated airspace, flying Southbound over the Hudson while climbing.
The helicopter pilot was climbing South in a blue helicopter that blended perfectly with the Hudson below while Steve, flying the Saratoga, was headed South.
As the aircraft converged, the helicopter gaining altitude and the fixed wing no longer in a position to see the helicopter climbing, they either collided or the downwash from the helicopter literally sucked the air out from under the airplane’s right wing. The right wing of the aircraft contacted one of the rotor blades and was immediately sliced off. The helicopter rotor, now hopelessly unbalanced, tore off, shaft and all, and the two doomed aircraft fell to the river below.
Recently received video of the crash shows that the Altman Piper was struck from the left and below by the helicopter. The video clearly establishes that Altman had the right of way as aircraft to the right have the right of way. The helicopter just crossed right in front of the Piper and it appears that unsuccessful evasive action by Altman may have preceded the collision by an instant.
Anyone who has ever flown a low wing Piper knows the visibility limitations forward and down. Why did this happen? The answer is simple. First New York must make its radar separation services readily available to VFR traffic because the concept of “see and avoid” just doesn’t work. Second, the question must be answered whether the helicopter company pilots communicate their intentions on any frequency to warn other aircraft to look for them before they climb up into the stream of traffic. There is a frequency 123.05 for this purpose that is published on the Aeronautical Charts but it is a very crowded and often garbled frequency rendering it useless for traffic avoidance. Last, the choice of blue for the color of Liberty’s helicopters makes no sense given the crowded environment in which they operate.
Nine people dead for nothing but the FAA’s failure, once again, to do its job. The FAA failed to regulate the Helicopter tour operators so they would announce their intentions or be in contact with air traffic control. The FAA failed to assure clear procedures for aircraft entering the stream of VFR traffic South and Northbound in this narrow corridor. In short the FAA created a free for all and this time instead of the helicopters crashing into themselves, which the usually do, they took another airplane along.
The media’s talking heads are frightening in their complete ignorance of both the problem and the solution. Sometimes it’s more frightening to hear them talk than it is to know the facts because they have exposure that is far greater than their uninformed views deserve. I have flown this route many, many times. It is safe when pilots fly in a straight path at a single altitude until they transit the area. It is unsafe when others climb into the flow of traffic unannounced and with no air traffic control whatsoever.
Rules of flight must exist in this corridor. Aircraft and helicopters travelling North must hug the Manhattan shore at an altitude of 600 feet or below. Aircraft and helicopters travelling South should hug the New Jersey shore and be no lower than 700 feet and below 1100 feet. All aircraft transiting the area should be talking to someone who is an air traffic controller. All aircraft climbing or descending should be required to be in positive air traffic control.
Hopefully changes for the better will come out of this. I doubt it will happen because the FAA never does anything when a few innocent people die, it waits until an airliner dies before public pressure forces it to make changes.
This accident and the unspeakable misery it has caused nine families is unforgiveable.
One Level Of Safety-An Elusive Goal For Commuter Airlines
There is only one level of safety. The problem is the experience level of the people who carry out that mission and the airplanes they must carry it out in.
There is no substitute for years in the cockpit and hours in make and model to ensure safety. A pilot can’t be worried that he doesn’t make enough to eat, put gas in his car, get his uniform cleaned or pay the rent if you want him to be clear headed enough to perform optimally. The salaries are too low, the benefits non-existent, the airplanes less than fully capable for the mission and still these kids do a great job. They make more takeoffs and landings in the worst weather and work the worst hours for the worst pay. They are motivated, enthusiastic and do their best to be safe. They are however for the most part youngsters and far less experienced than their big airline brothers.
Their airplanes still have outdated deicing systems but they are expected to fly in the worst icing. They commute to work because they can’t afford to live near their base and they are expected to perform at their highest level. Their dispatch is not to big airline standards and they are expected to deliver their passengers safely no matter what the delays, no matter what the weather and no matter how many legs they have flown in the soup.
Why is there surprise when one of them crashes?
What needs to happen is closer FAA oversight…heard that one before. They need a living wage and benefits. They need airplanes that are modern and safe in every respect i.e. no turboprops. They need the authority to cancel a flight without fear of retribution, read that getting fired, for doing so.
Continental Flight 3407 is an example of what’s wrong not with just commuters but with commercial aviation. They flew an airplane with boots that everyone knows do not work safely in many icing conditions and certainly those in existence that night. They were tired. They were not fully trained to understand the limitations of their aircraft, the limitations of its certification to fly in ice and what cues they would receive that the airplane was failing them and what to do about it. Maybe they should also have been told that if anything happens their company, the manufacturer, other pilots and the Government will turn on them and blame them for something for which they were blameless.
The problem with commuters isn’t their pilots, it’s the people who regulate them, run them and build the airplanes flown by them.
Arthur Alan Wolk
Additional Details Emerge on Air France 447 Crash
As additional details about the crash of Air France 447 are released, we now know that more information than was previously reported was being transmitted in real time including speed and altitude excursions, g-forces and all system read-outs, including computer faults.
Prior to the crash, Airbus had issued a bulletin instructing all crews to be certain, by comparing to global positioning systems that their airspeeds were being properly read by the computers from the Pitot-static Tubes on the nose of the aircraft. The suggestion is that these tubes can ice up in severe weather in spite of being heated. Here’s the reality – the reason for the odd airspeed differences is that in situations of severe turbulence the airspeed variations can be large because the wind direction and velocity are rapidly changing as is the flight altitude of the aircraft. In short, severe wind shear causes rapid changes in wind direction and velocity.
The bulletin makes sense but as the information trickles in, it begins to appear that severe turbulence and a breakup is more likely the culprit – a very bad ride indeed. The aircraft must be found in order to determine just what broke first – the tail, parts of the tail or the main wing box, the wing or parts of the wing. Only then will we know if the testing to ultimate load required for transport category airplanes is both realistic and stringent enough.
This never should have happened.
Lastly, there are serious limitations on weather radar on-board, as well as on those people who must interpret it. With all of the computing power on the A-330, much weather data was available to be downloaded, not only from the on-board radar but also from ground and space-based facilities as well because the computers can make a better decision on whether and how to proceed in the face of severe weather. We need to go there.
The Wolk Law Firm 
As Close As It Gets-It’s Time For Us, The Passengers, To Take Control Of Aviation Security
The recent Northwest Airlines near terrorist disaster brings back into focus just why we are in this horrible security predicament in aviation.
Before 9/11, we as a people were let down by our Government. The Bush 41, Bush 43 and Clinton administrations did not take terrorism seriously and did nothing to curb the growth of organized hatred for the United states, in spite of explicit warnings. Nothing was done after the World Trade Center bombings of 1994 to seriously address the threatened destruction of these structures. The FAA permitted knives of up to a four-inch blade to be carried by passengers on aircraft. The Immigration and Naturalization service did not have a list to prevent known terrorists from flying or from entering our country. The FBI ignored explicit warnings from at least two of its field offices that persons of Middle Eastern descent were learning to fly but not land airliners. The State Department was just too busy throwing cocktail parties to do anything useful. On 9/11 the terrorists were stopped for further interrogation because they all carried box cutters and then allowed to board because it wasn’t illegal in spite of the implications that anyone with a brain could have figured out.
So 3,000 people lost their lives and everyone remonstrated, while in Middle Eastern capitals they celebrated.
Fast forward, some guy is denied boarding on an American Airlines flight from France to the United States because he appears unstable and a day later he is allowed on. He tries to blow the airliner up unsuccessfully with a shoe bomb and now we all must take off our shoes before going through security.
Fast forward, a man is identified to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria by his father as radicalized and likely to cause harm to the U.S. and he is placed on the terrorist watch list but allowed to board an airliner in Nigeria for a flight ultimately to the U.S. The State Department does nothing. ICE, the new improved name for the old ineffective agency that is supposed to keep the bad guys out of this country does nothing. The TSA does nothing, and he is allowed to board a U.S. bound airliner with a bomb.
Now Lagos, Nigeria has been repeatedly on the U.S. State Department list of airports with questionable security anyway, yet this man who is a known risk is allowed to board, fly to the Netherlands and then board a U.S. bound aircraft with no one stopping him as a known terrorist.
Fortunately, his bomb doesn’t go off and we are spared another disaster of incompetence.
Now what is TSA doing about all of this born of the Government’s failure to do anything to protect us once again? It is going to impose more stringent security measures on whom…us. How stupid is this? What will it accomplish to keep us in our seats for the last hour of the flight because this man was said to have entered the bathroom for 20 minutes before he tried to detonate his bomb. Nothing we have done since 9/11 and nothing since each of these events have protected us from anything.
The only way to prevent terrorism on aircraft is to keep the terrorists away from the airport. Anything less will not work since our Government has proved itself again and again to be incompetent.
Here’s a further suggestion. Fire the people at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria responsible for this neglect. Fire the people at ICE who didn’t make their terrorist list a no fly list. Fire the people at the FAA who have proven once again to be ineffective. Fire the people at Homeland Security and TSA who still do not do their jobs to protect us.
We passengers are the last hope to prevent a terrorist from causing the deaths of all aboard. The Northwest passengers were lucky because had the detonator worked, they would all be dead. We are all self deputized as air marshals since the Government has failed us. We have the duty and responsibility to do the profiling that our Government refuses to do and report anyone who fits our view of a suspicious or dangerous person. If the Government won’t do it, we must help ourselves.
Lastly, we must require a background check of everyone who boards or wishes to board an International Flight. All done by and at the expense of the country who issues the passport, which then should be held fully responsible for the consequences of failing to their jobs effectively. In short, if you want to come here, you should prove that you will do us no harm.
We are at war and we still treat aviation as if it is not part of the front line in this war. We will have a disaster if we don’t start taking this risk seriously.